Modern Art Orchestra’s Legendary Albums series presents the most important and unique albums of jazz history. By learning and playing these compositions and arrangements, the musicians are paying tribute to the jazz legends and are undergoing an intense process of musical improvement. The band absorbs the material of the original recordings, sticking to the arrangements, forms and compositional features. As improvisation is at the heart of jazz, solos are invented by the players at the moment. Due to the respect shown towards the original conceptions of the legendary composers and the level of craftsmanship known from Modern Art Orchestra, the Legendary Albums series both brings you the essence of jazz tradition and guarantees a fresh musical experience.

The most vital information of this long album title is hidden in the word ’and’, as it is not only the first, but the only joint recording session of Armstrong and Ellington. The two artists have defined what jazz was from the twenties until they died in the seventies. There had been some attempts to bring them together after the shooting of the movie Paris Blues, but Bob Thiele finally managed to organise it for 3-4 April 1961. The trick was to have Ellington play piano in the Armstrong All Stars, but they only played Ellington tunes. These had been rather scarcely played and sung by Armstrong, but he actually kept quite a few of them on his repertoire later.

They started out with (what else than) C-Jam Blues, listed under the title Duke’s Place, and for the next ten tracks it is absolutely adorable how Armstrong masters these tunes, which he had to concentrate on a lot, but performed them with ease, e.g., Cottontail. One of those was actually composed on the spot by Ellington. And the pianist, actually quite underrated as such, sounds fantastic here. On a couple of tracks, for instance The Mooche clarinet player Barney Bigard stepped forward. In the title of his autobiography, there is the word ’and’: With Louis and The Duke, since he had been an eminent member of both bands since the twenties. He is also the co-composer of Mood Indigo, which they also perform here. There was a sequel to the album next year, as another seven tracks of the same recording session was also released. By now there have been over 50 different releases of the original master. There is no need to justify why the incomplete and alternative takes have also been published since. Even listening to those, one feels how these two unsurpassable masters were not just respectful and open to each other, their mutual love is obvious.